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Guest Post and Money Tip: 7 Simple but Smart Guidelines for Single Parents to Save Money

Being single again and managing your family all by yourself is certainly not a rosy experience. In fact, it’s quite a difficult job for a single parent to run the family with only one income. Situation can get worsened if you have to take care of a huge debt along with your household cost. However, with strategic thinking, financial disciplines and adequate savings you can certainly achieve a debt relief and improve your financial picture. Follow the points listed below to build up your saving account as a single parent.

  • Your first and foremost duty is to set your financial goals and priorities. Your primary focus should be your family needs. Make sure you understand the difference between needs and wants clearly. Once you are able to financially cover the basic needs of your family like food, shelter, child care and education, then you can look into what your family wants like karate classes, branded clothes or a weekend outing.
  • If you have to shop for heavy purchases like furniture, appliances, and clothing, go for thrift stores. It will certainly help you save some bucks. For grocery and vegetables prefer shopping in bulk. You can easily store perishable items that you won’t use right away in the refrigerator and stock up on non-perishable items when they are on sale.
  • Start using public transportation in order to reduce the cost of gas, insurance, and car maintenance and save the amount in a safe place.
  • Curtail on the spending over your kids and entertain them through public resources. For example instead of buying books, visit the library for story hours. You can rent movies, CDs and story book form a public library as well.
  • Create a coin bank and every week dump the changes, collected from gas station or grocery store into the bank. See how much you have collected over the course of a year. You can save up the money; you got as gifts on birthdays, holidays and sometimes unexpected gains like tax refund, lottery and overtimes.
  • Last but not the least; make a commitment to yourself that you will set aside 10% of your monthly income each month for a rainy day fund or a retirement fund.

Make sure you don’t spend your hard earned money in impulse buying and save it in a bank account. It’s possible for a Single parent to save big bucks; but it takes some serious commitment and time. Follow the aforementioned points and build up your saving sooner than before.

About Crystal Groves, Google+

Crystal Groves is a farmer, web developer, musician, blogger, and personal finance enthusiast from the back hills of Maryland and Pennsylvania. She started Money Drain as a project to encourage people interested in fixing their financial situation to share their stories and learn from the stories of others. We all make mistakes, but in order to change we have to make changes.

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